Tune in to this special episode of the Suite Spot to hear from two very special guests of the International Luxury Hotel Association. First off, President of the ILHA, Barak Hirschowitz, and Co-Founder of the association, Jonathan Edelheit, join the podcast to preview the upcoming INSPIRE USA conference taking place on December 10-11, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
These two luxury hospitality experts discuss several important topics in this episode, including the humble origin of the ILHA, how the luxury hotel market is leading the industry in innovation, what attendees can look forward to from INSPIRE USA 2025, and much more.
Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check in, and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Suite Spot, episode 185, and from the title we are previewing another hospitality event. One of my favorite things to do look at, and this one, it’s a first timer for me, not certainly for our guests. I’m gonna bring them and we’re gonna talk all about it. The Inspire USA event hosted by ILHA, the International Luxury Hotel Association. My two guests with me today, Barak Hirschowitz, President of the ILHA, and Jonathan Edelheit, co-founder of the ILHA, Barak, Jon, thank you so much for taking the time and checking into the Suite Spot with me.
Well, thank you. It’s wonderful to be here and great to meet you.
And we’re excited about it, excited about the event, but before we get into that, I wanna just start with a little bit of hospitality background. We always love to kind of start there. Hospitality’s such a funky industry. People come from different brands, they come from different backgrounds. Sometimes they fall into it, sometimes they fall into the industry with a summer job, sometimes they’re born into the industry. So I figured let’s go ahead and give our Suite Spot audience a little bit of background into your hospitality journey and what led you to the ILHA Barak. We’ll start with you and then go to Jon.
Yeah, thanks. So I started in the industry in the late, late eighties, early nineties. I went to Johnson Wales. I started as a, I started in culinary, as many people do in the hotel industry. And those were interesting times because back then there were really only a couple of places you get a degree in culinary arts. So it led me to, you know, travel abroad, which was great. I started, just before I went overseas, I did an internship at the Grand Floridian, which believe it or not, was still a fairly new hotel back then. And then started working abroad internationally, moved eventually to more the hotel side of the business. I worked in South Africa for some very well-known hotel brands. Sun International. Sun International is Saul K’s original brand that he had when he was still based in South Africa. So that, you know, today we know him for Atlantis and we know him for one, um, one and only hotels. But, um, back then he had Sun International, so I worked with him. I worked for a company called Halian Hotels, which had, uh, luxury hotels in, in South Africa, and actually a few up Africa as well. And, um, I had an opportunity, I guess my sort of real push, first push into luxury was in the late nineties. I got to help open a hotel called Bushman’s Klu in South Africa, which is a luxury safari lodge. The year, within a year of opening, we, um, we became a member of Relay and Chateau, which was a pretty prestigious, uh, pretty prestigious organization. And after I left a couple of years later, the hotel went on to win Best Hotel in the world, um, travel and Leisure. So, you know, that was a, it was really a, a great opportunity to see the best of the best in the world. I still to this day think it’s probably the most luxurious property I’ve ever stayed in, and still the best service, uh, that I’ve ever seen in any hotel. So it was great to be able to work in a place that had that level of, of, um, of luxury and, and, and guest experience. And so I think everything that I see compares to that time back then. So that’s really how I fell into the luxury hotel industry or came into luxury hotel industry.
What an incredible story and journey, one of the questions I pose all the time on this to my podcast guest is, your favorite hotel that you’ve ever stayed in and to be able to work for the number one hotel or have at one point, probably an easy answer to that question. Then, Jon, let’s, let’s move over to you. Where is your kind of background, and hospitality and brought you to ILHA?
I think it was definitely an interesting path over to the ILHA, originally, out of law school, I actually went into the health insurance industry, and then I was the first one to implement corporate wellness programs, employee health and wellness before was employee health and wellness. I, eventually, um, got very passionate about options for healthcare and founded the Medical Tourism Association, which operates all over the world as the Global Trade Association. And, and interestingly that’s, there’s a big segment of luxury, uh, travelers in that who are traveling, who have a lot of money to travel for the best healthcare in the world, stay at luxury, uh, hotels, and also engage in luxury kind of wellness activities. And so, uh, from that space, we, we dealt with a lot of governments, tourism boards, luxury hotels around the world. And that was a little bit of my segue, um, not not sharing the full story of like how Barack and I met and, and the founding of the ILHA, but came in from kind of a, a different side of it and, um, you know, but very passionate about it. And you mentioned about, um, you, the comment about your favorite luxury hotel. When you say that, I feel like it always evokes in all of our minds, you know, we get this visual of a specific hotel or specific experiences that really make us love certain properties. And I feel like that’s something that the luxury side has, that the other side doesn’t have, where, you know, there’s that the, they’re so focused on these special moments in every single detail that it really, I feel like almost seers into your brains and emotions, like some of those special things. And you notice it when it’s not there at properties.
Well, 100%. And that’s why you hear with, uh, especially the luxury sector. I mean, you have generations sometimes going to the same property or hotel that say, you know, my grandparents, I grew up here going to this luxury resort, you know, my parents then brought me, now I’m taking my kids here. You know, really in depth, uh, connections to our guests and travelers that you’re absolutely right, Jon, I think the luxury sector has, and, and it’s such a privilege to be in that space because you really get to emotionally connect with your traveler there. But I love hearing both your stories because it’s a, a, it’s a parallel of what we hear all the time in, in hospitality. One, uh, person that went to school for hospitality and culinary, and then the other one that went to school for something completely different and found themselves. And it’s the perfect mix and match, and that’s what makes our industry hospitality. So great. We’ve had the pleasure on this podcast. We’ve spoken to founders of management companies, you know, even a couple new brands, which seem to be popping up every single day, but I believe this is the first time that we’ve had founders of a hospitality association. So I wanna know what kind of goes through, you know, your mind, what’s the inspiration behind saying, Hey, let’s start this and, and give us kind of that, that background story about the ILHA. Jon, we’ll start with you.
Sure. I think what’s interesting about it is, is probably not many people that are like, let’s go start a, you know, let’s go start a nonprofit trade association, right? But I think you have to be passionate about wanting to bring change and wanting to bring innovation. You know, so you know, how ILHA was, was born, and I’ll tell my side of the story, and then Barak could share his is, you know, we saw this, this very specific fit within medical tourism with the medical tourism association within the luxury hotel segment. And that there needed to be deeper ties and connections to the space because everything needs to be integrative. Someone’s traveling for healthcare with their family, and they’re staying at a luxury property. Like it needs to be interconnected, it can’t be fragmented. And so we decided this was an area that we really needed to have deeper involvement from the luxury hotel side. And so I had reached out to Barak to speak at one of our conferences. And then I’ll let Barak maybe segue in from, from there as we, uh, you know, continue the line of the story.
Yeah. So I think, yeah, definitely I’ll bring you up to how Jon and I met because we started as luxury hotelers for those of that have known us since the beginning. I think what happened when I went to hotel school was we were taught that this is how luxury looks, this is how it smells, this is how it operates, this is how it feels. This is a, we all know that vision. If we’re, if you were in hotel school, uh, you know, even I think of like Alex Soar, president for Europe and Middle East, he went to Lassan, same thing, right? So when he, when we were talking about this, when he was in hotel school, it was, you know, it was marble, it was white table cloth, it was French chef, and pretty much that was luxury, right? So luxury was a very easy to understand, very easy to build or, or vision of what luxury is. And the guest expected, right? Then the internet came along and changed everything, right? So it changed our industry and continues to change it ever since. So let’s say for 300 years, luxury hospitality or luxury hotel industry looked one way, and then all of a sudden it went in a million different directions. And so, and with that, so did the growth of the industry. So at that time, those of us who had started to reach a point in our career where we were making bigger and bigger decisions, often those becoming quite expensive decisions. We couldn’t rely on the information that we learned from, let’s say, the traditional associations in our country that were, you know, the kind of associations that have been going back forever. Or the schools, they were what they had taught us was starting to change. Those rules didn’t work anymore. And so we started to but the internet was, was coming around forums. I dunno if you’re, I’m sure you remember forums were kind of a new thing back then. And so in the early two thousands, we created a forum called Luxury Hotels. And the idea was we invited 50, approximately about 50 hotels that I knew through the industry that were all kind of working internationally for brands, operators, asset management. Some of them were getting to asset management then. And the idea was just to kind of crowdsource or brainstorm some best practices to take on some of these new challenges. And so luxury tellers became this forum. It was around the time LinkedIn was starting as well. So, we moved on, we decided, oh, this looks like a cool tool. I’m not kidding you. And we started our group on LinkedIn, we had to tell people what it was, right? So they were like, well, what’s that? I’m like, it’s just a platform, but it’s kind of cool for this purpose, right? So we started the group and uh, we started just crowdsourcing, asking questions, and it was like a, for the forum just took off. And we were the first hospitality or travel group to ever had a hundred thousand people on LinkedIn. This was quite a long time ago. And at the time, we were a top 100, uh, group. Actually, LinkedIn asked us this. They used us at, they, they used our group as their example at their annual conference. And so of what groups can do, and so to, I mean, there’s so many things, but just to give you like some simple ones from the early days, right? Back then, Chinese travelers were first starting to travel and stay in luxury hotels around the world. And many of the hoteliers didn’t know how to cater for that, right? So we created one of our forum topics was we invited a couple of the hoteliers, uh, Peter Gaston was one of our co-founders, was the time he was he just retired, but he was one of the senior people for Ritz Carlton and Asia based in Hong Kong and a couple of others. And we said like, what can we do for guests that are traveling? And I remember one of the first things that came outta that was, you should put disposable slippers in the room, right? And here today, every time I open like a cupboard in any luxury hotel around the world, and I see the, so this disposable slippers, that was like one of the first things that really, like, it’s a great reminder of like the early days of the organization, but it was, it was, it was things like wifi, should we charge for wifi, you know, all these kind of discussions. We even had, I remember there was a Swiss hotelier that had like four or five ski lodges and was looking, was starting a loyalty program. And he asked for a name, and I think he got like 120 names or something in 24 hours. And he said he was able to pick like two or three names better than any agency could give him, you know? And that’s when we realized, wow, we’ve got some power. So at that point, a lot of the people who were quite actively involved in the forum suggest that we start an association, and we were told, I started to contact some of the existing associations and other people out there that, you know, kind of were involved with associations. And they’re like, why do you wanna do that? You know, the associations are like trying to be what you are today, right? Because back before then, associations, you, you couldn’t only get business information from school and then later on through your company, or if you wanted to know what other people were doing, you had to go to an association, an association event, get the association magazine. But now we had these new online forums where you could share information and it was a little bit more opaque. I mean, it was a little bit more transparent, sorry, and easy to get. And so, but at the same time, I think you need that connection and just structure, because we were all just volunteering our time. And that’s, as Jon said, he invited me to speak at an event. He had a very successful travel association. I the event that I attended, I think he had about four or 5,000 people at. And we were chatting afterwards, and that’s when he, you know, he suggested to us that we start the association, or at least to give us the structure of an association. As Jon mentioned, he went to law school, and so he really knew the ins and outs of that. So we were able to kind of combine the best of both worlds, which is this very large audience that we have, but then take in some of the structure of an association so that we could really employ some people to help this thing continue to grow.
Well, it’s incredible foresight to see, I mean, LinkedIn in the early days, I remember that was just a big job board for a lot of people for you. So for you to see the foresight to say, Hey, let’s use this as open forum. Let’s stop. You know, Jon, you mentioned fragmentation of the industry sometimes and silos that what that we sometimes find ourselves in, but to exchange those ideas because the luxury traveler today is truly international, and the luxury segment. So to make sure that you’re sharing those ideas, seeing those trends, and I’m sure a lot of those get brought up at the, what we’re previewing today, the inspire USA, event that we’re gonna turn our attention to December 10th and 11th, 2025 marks the 16th edition. It’s gonna mark the first edition that I will be going there. Almost positive you guys have been at every single one. Maybe talk us through the evolution of what year one looks like in comparison to year 16 and what the, and what we have in store for in Vegas this year.
Cool. Well, Jon, you were pretty heavily involved in year one, so let’s give you, uh, let’s give you the, the start on that one.
Yeah, no, I mean, I think year one was interesting. I forget what city that took place in Barak, but,
Okay. Because I remember Orlando, we had the elephant. We had a 10,000 pound elephant to come in the room. Her name was Roxy. And that was a theme around the elephant in the room. The industry was this topic. But, you know, when we started, it was, you know, ILHA, you know, was built out at the same time as we were holding our medical tourism conference, because part of the purpose of that was to lend the expertise of, you know, running a trade show is not easy. You know, the executive producers, the management, the space, there’s a huge investment in, in organizing it to launch it. And so, you know, I, you know, it, it’s always exciting and stressful when you’re in events because it’s not just, you know, from the first events, I feel like is the hardest. But at the same time, as you grow, I almost feel like there’s more pressure in year 16 than than previous years, because you always have to be better, right? You’ve gotta bring in, you know, better speakers. You have to have growth. You have to really dive into innovation and what people want. So the first year, it was a smaller event, but great in the fact that it’s new, right? So people come, everyone’s passionate, and every year we’ve really, um, striven to, you know, grow and make the, the, the attendees more diverse, bring in always better speakers, you know, and, and stay on top of what’s going on in luxury hotels and travel all around the world so people can get everything. ’cause like you said, is back in the day, I feel like luxury travel was almost like very siloed in the type of people that would travel. And now it’s a very diverse industry. I’m sure there’s people who still potentially don’t under, uh, understand it because you also have segments of luxury that like, where wealthy people can’t afford those luxury hotels because there’s all these different segments going. What I’m excited about is just, you know, some of the niche in our events going forward, focusing on all these areas of personal experience and the breadth of where we’re seeing luxury, luxury go. But I’ll, I’ll turn it over to Barak.
So, and although our event was quite small, as Jon said, you know, at the first event, it was actually a large event. So what happened was, and this is the benefit of partnerships, right? So by meeting Jon, they already had four and a half thousand people coming to their travel conference. So he gave us space and the expertise and the lift to be able to build a co-located show within his show. So the amazing thing was that even though our show was a segment of his, you know, a smaller part of his show, and we did that for about three years before we were able to kind of really have the size to go out on our own. But those first couple of years were great because people who attended the event for them, I mean, they were able to attend basically two events in one. We had some really high powered, high level speakers because of the size of Jon’s event, and that really gave us a lot of cloud in the early days. So, you know, I can’t thank Jon enough for taking us and helping us have kind of those training wheels in the early days and make us, we were able to bat a lot bigger than we you know, than we were at that time. So that was great. I think it really helped us.
Barak, I just had the flashback to, I think it was after the three years, Barak said, Hey, listen, we, we need to be in a luxury hotel now, because we were doing it in convention centers, right? A luxury hotel conference can’t really be in a convention center.
Although I say I say that. And now it’s interesting because, and, and I know we’re the topic of this, this, this, uh, podcast is on the INSPIRE USA, but I’d like to mention that we inspire, Europe is returning for its third year, and it’s actually next month, uh, in November. So it’s, it’ll be the 12th and the 13th in Prague. And Prague is, we’re very excited because Prague doesn’t normally get larger conference. They’re obviously, it’s a very, very busy tourism city, probably one of the best, and busiest tourist cities in Europe. But they don’t get a lot of meetings there because large meetings there because of the hotels that are quite small. And so for us, even just to find a hotel that could hold more than a couple of hundred people was difficult. So we partnered with the grand with the Park Hyatt there. However, the event is actually taking place in the Czech National Bank headquarters Congress Center. So it’s their former, their former, stock exchange commodities exchange, which is the most beautiful you can imagine. The bank uses it, and Moody’s just had their European conference there. So it’s this very beautiful royal building, and it’s right across the street from the hotel. So we’re very excited to be having that there. But yeah, and that’s only because we’ve, there just wasn’t the capacity for us there, um, in luxury hotel, but fortunately in, uh, in the us there is, and so we’re, we’re back in Vegas again this year, um, at Resorts World, and we’re really looking forward to, to that.
Well, that’s what I was gonna say, and Jon, to your comment, you know, you say bigger and better. So I’m expecting two elephants this year, uh, in Vegas, but you know, I don’t know.
I dunno if they’ll let us in the convention center. Where we either Orlando, our executive producer thought we were crazy, and it took about a couple calls over a month, and she was like, oh, you’re serious. And then two weeks later, she called back and said, you won’t believe it, Jonathan, but there’s an elephant sanctuary outside of Orlando, and we can get the elephant in the convention center. Said, we’ve never had a request like this before, but then they approved it.
Hey, there you go. You know, and anything can, especially in Vegas too, anything can happen. So let, let’s try to make it happen. But I do wanna talk to you about that location is everything in hospitality when you’re talking hotels, but it, the same can be true with a successful hospitality event returning to Vegas this year. Barak, why, and maybe you can speak specifically to Resorts World, why was just this makes the perfect venue, for Inspire USA this year?
Yeah, so we had a wonderful event last year in Las Vegas. We’ve been we were a few years ago, we were at the Four Seasons Las Vegas, which we loved. It was a great event. They just, we just outgrew the space that they have there. Vegas is a, you know, Vegas is one of those places where you’re when you grow, if you get too big, I mean, if you get too big for the regular hotels, you still have to get a little bit larger to get into the very big spaces. So it’s kind of awkward and it can be tricky to find the right space. And last year we did with the Fountain Blue, we were very excited to be one of their first events from their opening, and we really enjoyed it. We try to change it up every year just to have something a little bit different. But Las Vegas was so successful for us that people just felt we should, we’ve never kept it in the same place two years in a row. We’ve always moved it kind of East Coast, west Coast, and, um, I chatted and so we, you know, we, we decided to, let’s, hey, let’s, we loved it. It was just so great being in Vegas, and it was easy for people to get to and there. And so we decided to look around, see what was there, and the weeks that we normally would do it at the Fountain Blue was, had already been booked from a year earlier. So we knew we were gonna have to be in a different location. Went over to Resorts World, checked it out, and while we were there, carnival uh, cruise Line was actually having a conference there. Arnold Donald, who used to the previous CEO had actually, um, been a speaker at one of our conferences previously. Uh, uh, and so I, I met a couple of his people there, uh, and they said, oh, come in and have a look around. And the space was perfect for us. So we, you know, we approached them and we’re very excited. It’s kind of a, it’s kind of a fun space because the area that we’re in is, it’s there, you know, the, the, there’s the normal convention side, and then there’s the part we, where we are is, is kind of like where the, a lot of the restaurants and things are. So it’s got a very engaged feel. Often I think you feel in meeting spaces, like you could be anywhere in the world. You know, meeting spaces tend to look a lot similar. What I’m very proud of this year is that both of our events are one in Prague and the one in Las Vegas, they don’t feel like they’re in convention space. So the space, for instance, that we’re in is multi, it’s kind of multi-floor, very unique space, but it’s also got views full floor to ceiling, you know, instead of looking at banqueting walls, we’re looking at floor to ceiling views of the strip. So, very excited about that.
Yeah, you can’t get much better than that. And that’s the beauty of having those connections made. You know, you might have a connection having a conference or convention in the Hotel next door, and you can go ahead and poke your head in and maybe see if it’s right for, for your association. So, uh, very cool. Jon, any thoughts on, on returning back to Vegas this year?
I’m excited to return back to Vegas, and I’m also excited, while the Fountain View Blue is a beautiful property just opened, I think a lot of our attendees also, they wanna experience other luxury hotels. They want to see everything that they have from the rooms to like, you know, just all the different aspects of it. So I think it’s just cool to be able to move around and showcase that. And I think the thing that excites me the most is we’ve really created this special place where the VIPs in the industry, you know, the owners, the asset managers, the hospitality management companies, the GMs can come together in like kind of an intimate group and share innovation and connect. And I think we’ve fostered a really great environment where it’s not in any way clique-ish. It’s like you can, you know, you, you could be standing there and meet the CEO of Carnival Cruise Lines or, or Virgin Hotels or the owners, uh, you know, someone who owns a hundred hotels and, and just like a normal person, and you can have a conversation. And that’s one thing I really love about our show is, you know, we’ll participate in shows in the hotel space, but I feel like there, there’s these big exhibitions where just you’re just meeting exhibitors. It’s mid-level people and you know, you’re just, you’re learning of our products, but there aren’t decision makers. And I just love the fact that we bring those decision makers that kind of share what they’re doing that’s special and that we can kind of impact the industry, but bring it together in more of an intimate setting. And we’ve also always tried to really control, um, that while we have sponsors, you know, that it’s, that it’s a limited number of sponsors, that it’s the right sponsors and that, you know, there’s that those right connections take place.
Sorry, John, I was gonna jump in. Um, I’d also just feel like this is a good time to, just a big shout out to, um, Encore and Cvent our event partners. They, um, well, obviously Cvent has, they, they do all of our, you know, our ticketing and registration, and they’ve made that really easy. But Encore, they have been supporting us over the years with, with just amazing innovative, uh, event tech. But I try to push the boundaries a little bit every year and try to think outside the box on how we can do this. Last year we wanted all stages in one. I think for us, when we can speak to this, I think, you know, it really lends to networking when you can keep people in the same area. And I think one of the problems with events and event spaces is often you’re spread out all over different places. So we pushed them last year, um, or not pushed them, we challenged them last year to come up with ways to keep everybody in the same space. And so they created these stages within spaces, um, so that you never had to leave the main space to go to any meeting space. And it meant doing something that was very unusual and it was very successful. And so when we met this year, they were like, what are you gonna do for us this year? What are you gonna, what’s, what’s the challenge for this year? So I said, well, this year we are going to, I said, you know, to be honest, conferences are great and they’re really important. Um, and it does, we, we do try to keep ours limited. We’re not trying to be an expo, but at the same time, most people can’t go to them, right? And we have to be respectful that our audience and our community, most of them are not gonna be able to attend this event, right? If you have 500,000 people that are in one way or another, connecting with you and your content and what you guys do in participating, there’s no way. So what we do is we give away everything, all of our content’s given away. It’s all recorded, and it’s all shared for free to everyone that’s out there that wants it. We’ve always done that. And so this year, to make that easier, we, our challenge to encore and, um, Helen and Brad from Encore, who have really, and their teams, was to create stages that were actually recording studios. So this year, all the stages are actually recording studios, and they’ve, they’ve built them to look like TV studios. So when our, and also I said, we don’t want anyone to feel like when you have multiple stages, there’s always like, oh, we wanna be on that stage or the stage. I said, each stage has to stand on its own at its own level so that when somebody speaks, whether they’re in, you know, the bigger room, I guess you could say, or the smaller. So we took these unique spaces that they created and we really built, like for instance, to me, the one that’s standout is a full on, it’s a full recording studio in an all in kind of a converted, um, they use it as meeting space, but it’s a converted, uh, retail luxury retail space that’s right next to us. And, but it’s all glass. So people from the whole, so while there were gonna be, you know, it has seating as a stage would normally have, but it’s built like a TV studio and it’s all glass, and you can see it from across the Mall of Resorts world. So as people are at restaurants and shops, they’re gonna kind of that times square effect where you, you’re in Times Square and you watch them shooting TV shows, it’s gonna look like that. So we’re really excited about that part of it this year.
Well, it’s so cool. Another example of you guys breaking down barriers and silos, again, to give that content out and share that with everyone. Especially, I mean, right now we are at a really unique time in our industry where, I’ve talked about it on the podcast before about, I think hoteliers are, yeah, I’ll create a new term here, like FOMOT, which is like the fear of missing out on technology. And they are really, really nervous about, am I implementing technology enough or are my competitors ahead of me? So it these intimate settings that you’re talking about, you know, like Inspire, USA, these are great forums and opportunities for hoteliers to talk about that challenges that they’re having, the wins that they’re having, you know, and, and actually get a better sense and calibrate where they sit in trends, issues, and challenges that they’re having in the hospitality space. And that’s what we’ve craved and missed so much when events kind of disappeared, uh, on us, uh, a couple years ago. So, really excited to do that. And, you know, looking at the speaker list for the event, it’s really a who’s who in luxury hospitality. We could almost have an entire episode based on this agenda that I’ve seen so far. But Barak, Jon, what, what sessions are you most excited about, uh, seeing in this year’s educational programming? Barak will start with you.
Well, I’m not gonna fall into that trap of answering that question, . But I wanna, I think it’s important to kind of set for those people we’re, you know, I think for people who haven’t been to inspire, let me tell you what I think sets us apart, that’s different, right? So there are a lot of events out there, and we partner with many of them, right? And they’re all, you know, most of them are longer established than us, I would say some of them are newer. But what sets us apart is firstly that we have this advantage of, because we have this huge, our online audience, we don’t need our events to be. So for us, we always host the event at the end. Our event is always this inspire in Las Vegas, this event is always held at the end of the year. It’s held right at, you know, anything about hotel lifecycle. It’s held right after Thanksgiving, but right before the Christmas holiday start, right after, um, uh, ILTM. And so what happens is, there’s this weird thing, like the year is done, it’s finished. Everything you’ve done for the year is behind you. If you work for any company of any kind, you’re done. I mean, obviously if you’re in operations, you’re about to get hit with Christmas, but generally it’s that quiet period where you can say, the books are closed, everything’s done, and we’re about to go on vacation. So we catch everyone at like, I feel like I attend a lot of conferences, and I feel like they’re always, you’re rushing from one to the next. We have got this energy usually like, I mean, I was thinking like over the years, like the Eden Rock and the Biltmore and all the Christmas decorations already up, and there’s just this, you know, and the Hanukah just all the, like seasonal holiday decorations are up and the vibe is in. And so what happens is people come there and they’re, they’re in this mood already. Like, okay, I can breathe and I can actually focus and have a good time. The second thing that sets us apart is that we started this organization. Everyone told us in the beginning that you need to like, be specific. Like what’s your focus? I think our, our hardest thing that we had in the beginning was trying to get people to understand that we’re not, we’re a little bit of everything and not one thing. And there’s a reason for that. So this is the one event that you can come in and you can meet and sit in front of people who are very, very high level asset managers. People who are involved, who typically only go to real estate conferences or investment conferences. They don’t go to operational conferences, they don’t go to tech conferences, they don’t go to food and beverage conferences, they don’t go to wellness conferences. They don’t go to sales and marketing events like ILTM, right? Then you have the same people, heads of brands who only go to those kind of, you know, W-T-M-I-I-T-B type events. Then you have people who are very senior, but only go to technology events, right? And then, and so we can go down the line, but the thing is that our industry’s really split into, I would say design, investment and operations. I mean, sorry, the design investment and, and, and sort of asset side, real estate side of the business. Then there’s the ops side of the business, and then there’s the marketing side of the business. If I had to generalize, right? So I think most events fall into one of those three categories. And depending on what their level is, even if they’re very senior, they tend to go to those events in their category. So it was very hard to convince them to come to something that maybe only had a little bit in their category, but when they came, they got to meet people that they don’t normally meet, but at very high levels. But they also got to learn stuff. You know, there was a time you could, you could be in the real estate side of the business and not need to know what’s going on in marketing or investment. I mean in ops and vice versa. You could be in marketing and not really have to know what goes on in real estate, but the industry has been changing so fast and continues to just accelerate that. If you don’t have your finger on the pulse of everything, then you are not gonna be able to make those big financial decisions in your category. And so this event is the only event that I know of that brings together very high level people across each category. So you may come here and go, oh, there’s not enough for me. There’s only a few things on investment here, and I only go to investment conferences. You better come to this one because it’s for those that do come here and they come every year, they say, okay, now I understand it’s like a finishing school. It’s just you’re gonna start that new year in a few weeks with kind of a better, more well-rounded vision of what’s going on in the industry than just what they tell you at the, you know, in your siloed part of the industry. So that’s really cool. The other thing is, it’s really, it’s not, we, we, we kind of limit how big it gets because it’s the level of people we have don’t tend to come to expo type events and they love to network with each other and just hang out with each other. And so we keep it very small by that standard of events, um, just so that they can, they can network and they love it, and they come back and they see each other once a year and stuff like that. So that’s really cool and that’s different. And then the last thing I’d say is, Jon kind of touched on it, our partners are supporters. Our entire organization is, is supported by sponsors and partners. But we’ve realized that it’s not just money that they give us. They actually give us like the expertise to run. We’re expected today as hoteliers to be, to know everything about everything and every, that changes every month what the guests want, right? It goes from, this is innovative to like, you better have it, right? So they, they don’t, they don’t compare you to the other hotels anymore. They compare you to their homes. So if they use Netflix at home and they love to watch the show and they come stay in your Italian, they can’t easily put Netflix on the tv. Now think about this. That was something that was not important maybe two years ago. Okay? And so what we talked to them about is you need to know what is, um, I’m actually giving a talk about this next week, but in Texas, but you need to, you need to, well, we help them identify, I think we’ve learned over the years is what’s innovative versus what is now sort of expected to what’s mandatory. And that changes. So like, I mean, think of coffee, you know, like you, you, you could give, no one cared what coffee you gave in a luxury hotel room, let’s say six years ago, right? Maybe earlier then some hotels started giving great coffee. Today, if you don’t have an espresso machine in your room, they’re not happy, right? So think about that, like how quickly that goes from, and that’s because they have them at home. So they’re like, well, if we have this at home, why can’t you have this in a luxury hotel room? So beyond the fact that hotel rooms are showrooms, they’re also being compared to people’s homes. So that’s where our organization really helps. But I think also just the partners, the support sponsors, we stopped looking at the them as vendors and we started looking at them as experts at what they do, right? Who better to tell you what’s going on in the coffee industry and what the consumer demands than the top coffee companies in the world? We’ve also, you’ll probably noticed something a little bit different for us, we don’t really have an expo. We could have very easily with a ma you know, with an audience decides we have, we could easily have an expo, but we chose not to do it because it’s one of the reasons when you grow a large audience, you have, you really have to be, you need to respect their time. And we can’t over advertise to them. That’s how we grew. And so what we did instead was we found partners that we thought were the best, the business and our event is like a celebration for them. So they all come and you won’t see competing partners there, you see our partners. So we try to have one partner in each space. I gave some examples earlier. So you’re, you know, I think that some of the big expos are great ’cause they can show you everything that’s out there. But when you come to our event, you’re just gonna see the preferred partners of our organization. And, um, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting I think, ’cause we, we’ve spent time curating them and it’s, they’re great companies. Um, and at the same time, like I said, it’s, it’s a very, um, it’s just a, it’s, it’s a, a very, if you’re in the luxury hotel industry, it’s a great event to come and sit in front of some people that are very, very high level that you wouldn’t normally get to meet. They’re not in and out is what I mean. They’re not just popping in doing this session and going, they’re hanging out. So it’s, we create the space for that.
Ryan, you know, you’d mentioned something before about tech and I, I think it’s important because one thing I love about the luxury segment is that they invest, right? And they’re looking at the most advanced tech and the most, you know, the best experience they can give. And I notice it ’cause I always stay at different luxury hotels. I don’t stick to one brand ’cause I wanna see what’s going on no matter where I travel, Latin America, Asia, you know, uh, middle East, and you know, and then you, you see stuff you love and then you go to another hotel and you’re like, oh, this is so frustrating, right? Like, uh, uh, especially stuff you can do with your phone. But also, I was recently at a show, um, I won’t say what show it is, but like, big, big, big hotel, hospitality tech show and you know, and there was all different tech there, you know, like from the robot making coffee and espressos and cappuccino to other things. And, and I was talking and I was like, you know, going through and saying like, oh, this would be amazing. Like if this was at a hotel, like it wouldn’t be just cool for me. But like my kids, anyone with family members would love a robot making their cappuccinos. And I’ll sometimes talk to like, go around to look what’s innovative, what would be good for the luxury space, and talk to them. And it’s funny ’cause it’s like, how’s your adoption going? And they’ll be like, well it’s, it’s, it’s not, you know, we’re having a hard time penetrating the hotel space. And it’s like, who are you selling to? And they’ll be like, well, we’re selling to, you know, the, they’ll throw out the normal brands like mid-market, right? Or, or lower market. And I’ll be like, well, have you talked to the luxury side? And and they’ll be like, no. And I’ll be like, but you realize like they’re the ones investing in all this new cool stuff where mid-market and the lower market. Like, they’re not making investments in that stuff. And I think it’s important if you’re doing something innovative in technology or just innovative in the hotel space, the luxury hotels are very successful. Post pandemic revenue’s gone up, everybody’s spending money. There’s different segments. These are the groups that are willing to push the edge on innovation. And then the mid-market and the others are looking at one luxury. Every fo everyone follows luxury to see what they’re doing. For me, an exciting thing for the upcoming conferences, uh, one of the sessions on longevity, everybody says they do wellness. And I think, um, you know, like every hotel and then you don’t know what, what true is wellness or wellbeing, uh, ’cause right? ’cause every hotel is doing something very specific and sometimes it’s not defined. And I think we have some really great brands and some innovators coming to speak. And I think there’s gonna be this big change in the industry about, it’s gonna go from maybe general wellbeing to like very, there’s gonna be a niche of very, very serious where it’s like people looking at, you know, how do I live longer? How do I, um, my, my maybe my quality of life. So maybe I’m 70, but I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m 50 a 50-year-old. Like, you know, you know, in the 70-year-old body reverse aging, reverse disease, we’re starting to see a lot of luxury properties around the world roll out stem cells to reverse disease and reverse aging. I went through stem cells about a year ago, um, in my biological age reduced by seven years. And, uh, and we’re seeing this huge investment in properties now, bringing clinics in and looking at, you know, mixing, um, not, I wouldn’t say healthcare, right? You’re not coming and, you know, and, and, and, uh, and getting something where all my knee hurts or I’m sick. It’s more of I wanna know what’s going on in my entire body and I want all the most cutting edge like, um, supplements or tests or things where I can learn like how to reverse aging, reverse diseases, live a better life for me or my family members. And, you know, being at the front of it, and in a lot of these conversations as these projects are being developed are in the conceptual phase. I’m super excited because I think we’re gonna see this wave of a lot of longevity, serious longevity pop up in luxury hotels around the world. It’s already starting, but the wave’s coming and then projects get launched around true serious intense wellbeing. And it could be a mix of western medicine and eastern medicine. And I think that also what we’re seeing is people realize they’re not getting this from their doctor. They’re not getting it from, if they have insurance, insurance isn’t really covering anything. And so what they’re looking at is, where can I go take a vacation, but at the same time get this like complete check-in. And then there’s another segment of it that I think that depending on the segment of the guest and the, the, the wealth, right? There’s this signal, um, a virtue signaling was like, you know what? I just spent 25 grand for this, right? I just went to this luxury hotel and I spent 50 grand for this experience and now I’m gonna live longer and my family’s gonna live longer and we’re gonna live healthier. But I’m excited to it because I wanna go stay at these properties. I want to go through these experiences.
I was just gonna say, it’s, it’s very exciting. So we have, and Jon’s I think introduced us to some amazing, um, so, you know, if you, if you’re not able to come to the event, certainly keep following us. Um, you know, we’ve, we’ve we’ve learned a lot about longevity and how it’s moving. Some real examples like Clinique la Prairie from, um, Switzerland, for instance, one of the original Longevity institutes. Not many people know this. It’s, uh, what’s the cost to stay there, Jon, for a week?
Yeah, I I feel like it’s, I could be wrong. Like it could be like 40, 50,000. It’s not, yeah,
It’s really, it’s in the tens of thousands to stay there for a week, I believe. And they’ve just opened, um, they’ve opened in, um, in Dubai, um, in a hotel in Dubai. They’ve opened, um, their opening in Saudi, in China, in Thailand, um, all in partnerships with luxury hotels. And these are, people will pay to travel to these, um, to these longevity institutes that are now being built into luxury hotels. So that’s a really exciting part of it. And then just to, to kind of pivot back to the question that you were asking about, you know, some of the sessions coming up and who the speakers we have, I’m really, I mean, every year our team really knock it out the park with speakers, but the lineup this year is like, is the who’s who of everyone. So whether it’s on the investment side, on the finance side, I mean, we’ve got John Tore, uh, Dan Peak, we’ve got um, uh, Glenda Powell, we’ve got Jonathan Fick, all these people that are, I dunno if you, you know, check out our agenda. But they’re all like the heads of, you know, leading companies on the capital, on the real estate side of the industry. And then of course, big management companies, Walter Eisenberg’s back again this year with us for our CEO of Sage and a lot of the big management companies with president of Abridge for Europe, speaking in Europe. And so we have really the who’s who on, on not just the, the brand side, of course, you know, hor Hor Schultz is gonna be with us this year, one of the co-founders of Ritz Carlton, an iconic hotelier if there’s ever one. And so we have, it’s, it’s hard to pinpoint specific sessions, but if you wanted to kind of like see some of the diversity of sessions we have and how wide ranging it is, we’ll be talking about like investment. Obviously we, we know there’s headwinds right in, in, in the real estate side of the industry right now with capital markets being what they are. And we’re at the top of a long time growth in hospitality. So we’re starting to deal with some of those headwinds. So how we could turn those headwinds into opportunity. But we have literally like the biggest people in industry speaking about, right? So the, the, the who, who then you kind of flip to like sports tourism is a really big thing. Um, I’ve traveled for sport. I’m, I’m a marathon runner, so I, I do a lot of that kind of thing. So we have like, uh, it’s just really interesting ’cause we have like a session on, on, on how hotels are starting and obviously Vegas is a perfect example of Formula One. So, um, one of our partners, a DA cosmetics, I don’t know if you know this, but a DA cosmetics is part of BWT, which is the owners of the, of the, um, Alpine, uh, formula One team. So, um, they are, you know, gonna be talking to us. We have a confirmed 360 who, they’re providers, I don’t know if many people know this, but they, they’re behind some of the biggest concierge companies around there. Like when you go to one of those concierge companies and you say, Hey, I need tickets for Taylor Swift Front Row, can you get ’em? They’re the ones that actually get those tickets. And so confirm 360 are actually partnering with us, with us this year because they, they used to really just do this for elite concierge services, but now they’ve started to extend it to the hotel industry and, um, especially now that guests are relying more and more on the hotels for coming up with this kind of stuff. And so they’re doing an activation for us where, um, they’re gonna give our, our attendees an opportunity to go to the stadium, um, the Raider Stadium and take a tour, go back, back tour of it and things like that. So, um, that’s very, very cool. We have, uh, as Jonathan mentioned, we talk about things like wellness. Technology’s obviously huge, so we have a lot of sessions on, on that side, F and BI mean, for most of these investment people who attend, they rarely have F and b um, sessions, you know, so for them, they’re, they’re picking up on stuff that’s like sustainability and f and b and things that they maybe wouldn’t connect with at other conferences. So we’ll be talking about, um, obviously like the big labor challenges and some of the trends, brand and luxury, we try to look at the advantage of being at the end of the year is we kind of, we look at what people have spoken about already and then we kind of look at what’s really coming in. And I’m gonna tell you like my, my, I I, I have something personal every year that I kind of take on that. I think just from our big picture perspective as the president, like what is something that’s like right now, like this year that people haven’t quite clicked with yet. And for me, odd message, and like I said, I’m speaking about it next year, at our next week we’re at a vendor conference in Texas is, and I spoke recently at a conference for the, I was invited to speak at the, at the fitness industry, CEO summit, which is really unusual for me to be there. And they wanted hospitality in there. And it’s along the same lines, which is really, you know, guests are now expecting this kind of stuff, right? Like, I think fitness and wellness, this is the year that that changes, right? I think most guests are not happy anymore with your crappy gym. They’re not happy with crappy gym equipment. They want classes in the hotels. They want things like this. And so we’re actually partnering with some of the biggest fitnesses organizations. Not just the equipment makers, but actually gym companies too. There’s always gonna be the innovators, like, you know, Equinox and these guys who, who, who partner with these gyms, the Epic and Miami, who has, you know, a gym with glasses and one hotels and those brands that were, they’ve, they’ve been in it already, but for everybody else out there, you know, this is the thing where the guests are now starting, it’s the wifi of today. Like, what is your fitness offering at your hotel? And I think that that’s like, I think part of the driving, like I would leave with people today to start p their eye on that. And then also, but then how do we know we as hoteliers, how do we know when we need to do this? And this, my thing this year is your suppliers or yours service providers or vendors or whatever you wanna call ’em, they are often the brightest minds in your hotel when it comes to answering these questions. Right? We had, at our event last year, Serta, one of our longtime partner Serta Simmons, brought in sleep scientists. ’cause we’re in the business of sleep, right? And the funny thing is, we are terrible at it. Like we think we’re good at it, but we’re putting in LED lights, we have curtains that don’t close. We put super high thread count sheets onto mattresses that basically we didn’t know this. And their sleep scientists came in and said, listen, you realize if you go super high thread count, you’re saran wrapping a mattress and a mattress designed to take heat away from your body. So what’s the guest gonna do? They’re gonna crank up the ac. So not only are you paying for fancy sheets, the guest is unhappy and your your energy bill goes up. So by realizing that some of our ven our vendors are, you know, they’re not just selling to us, they’re selling in retail and they know what is, they know how to use their products, but they also know what the consumer market wants today, what, what’s important for them today and what’s coming. And so, you know, I think that that’s something that I, I I, our this year’s leave is don’t just look at your suppliers and your vendors as like somebody who brings you something or you purchase something from, think of them as actually the solution or the expertise that you need to make some of these decisions around. Like, don’t just go and go, Hey, I need 3000 mattresses. Go to them and say, how can you like, help our guests sleep better or help us understand how to do this better. You know, same thing, but we used coffee as an example earlier, like, how am I supposed to know about my guest today wants to know where this coffee was sourced, what kind of bean it is? You know, how am I supposed to know all this stuff? Right? Well, if you have a good coffee supplier, they can tell you and they can also tell you what the guests are expecting and what’s important to ’em today. And so, um, you know, that’s I think something that I just, I feel for us is really important this year is just really teaching the hoteliers how to look at their partners, just not as suppliers, but also as like as, as a wealth of knowledge to help them keep up with these guests that are, you know, constantly demanding something new because that’s what they have at home now.
And you can’t get, you can’t get away with you what you could in the past. I feel like, you know, if I’m at a luxury hotel and the coffee in the room is not good, it’s poor. Like that’s a reason for me not to come back to that luxury hotel as a little ’cause you just don’t expect it. Or you’re talking about the gym is, you know, when I go to Abu Dhabi, I love staying at the Grand Hyatt. It’s one half of the four is the gym facing the sea. Right. It’s gorgeous. You get like, they get it. I love working out. It’s a place. And then I, you know, and then you go to like, I think it was the St. Regis in Doha. And I go and it’s kind of like in the basement, it’s small, everything is packed in. It’s older. You’re looking at walls everywhere and you’re like, you know, like this is not the experience that your guests who are coming for, who this is important for them. It’s like you have to, you know, every guest has their own passion and you know, within that space, like, and you have to be able to accommodate them. And I think it’s so much more in the details of what matters to each of ’em that’s important.
We don’t, yeah. And we don’t, as hoteliers we don’t, what do we know about gyms? Right? So, you know, I I try, I also say to, you know, our industry has an incredibly high turnover. We always have. We always will, right? And as much as we try to improve that, it’s the nature of our business that whatever you bring in, it’s, you need to make it something that is, we’re not act, we, we have a high turnover. And that does tend to hurt sometimes us being able to kind of keep up as well with this demand. So not only are we like battling to kind of keep our staff and keep our turnovers low, but we’re trying to understand what these guests want all the time. And I think that’s where like, you don’t need to be an expert, but you can partner with a gym company who can tell you how to run a gym. I mean, as simple as take the equipment you have in it, let’s say you bought really nice equipment, but is it placed correctly in the gym? Do you have, you know, if I walk into one more gym and I look at a bowl of apples and some towels and a pa plastic water dispenser with paper cups, then I know you’re doing the absolute bare minimum congratulations. Right? But those guests don’t want that. They want, they go to the gym five times a week and they’re traveling and they want to have a similar experience. So you better partner with a gym or get a gym company to help sort that out. And I think that that’s where I think we don’t need to be overwhelmed, right? We just have to look at our partners and find the right partners who are experts at it and say, Hey, listen, we don’t know anything about gyms but our guests, it’s really important to them. How can we get classes in here? How can we make our gyms better, um, help us understand how to do that.
That’s, we’re, we’re harping on gyms, but I’ll go when I was, I was just in Malaysia at the, uh, was it the four c St. Regis. And I walk in and they have, like, I travel a lot and I get back pain from long flights and they have the, the one piece of the back equipment that I, that just solves all my back pay. And, you know, you see it and you’re like, you’re just so excited. And every day I go to work out, but to use that piece of equipment, I’m not a runner like Barack, but it’s like those things matter. And I think hotels need to ask the experts in the industry versus just saying, we just, you know, we’re gonna do the bare minimum, we’ll have the equipment and that’s it. I don’t think they understand the importance.
So, and they, but their guests understand the importance and, you know, again, they don’t need to know. They, they, you know, today’s GI guess the, the, the takeaway is that, you know, today’s innovation is tomorrow’s baseline and you need to kind of keep up with that. And that’s, I think what our association has really been trying to help a lot of, uh, hoteliers understand is, okay, where are we in the cycle from innovative? Like, cool, you can have it and you can really impress guests. Um, to, you know, the first time I ever saw classes in a, in a gym was when we held an event at the Epic in Miami, I mean in a hotel. And today it’s like, it’s gonna be normal. I would say within two years. Most luxury hotels will have some sort of classes, whether they’re virtual or not. So in, across whatever it is that we, whatever our is that our guests want, you know, we, we need to know where they’re at in that cycle.
The other thing is how do you measure and track stuff? So my wife’s traveling to a luxury hotel in like two weeks, right? And I’ve texted, I WhatsApp the hotel several times ’cause they have a WhatsApp number. They don’t answer, they don’t answer their phone for some reason a couple times. And they don’t respond to WhatsApps. It’s been three WhatsApps in 48 hours. So someone at that hotel has decided, right, I’m gonna implement this technology so guests can communicate with us easier. But what happens when that doesn’t happen? And I’ve had that happen on other trips where they have WhatsApp, they have what texting and it takes hours for people to respond. Then you go to a property where you do it and there’s an instant response, right? So it’s, you know, you can go adopt the most cutting edge tech, but are your people trained? Are you measuring it? Are you doing it right? And getting that, you know, that the benefit out of adopting it.
We’ll cover a lot of that stuff at the event of course. Um, and, you know, we’ll this is kind of what we talk about. So you’re, I guess we should, we should we, we could probably talk for days and hours, very passionate as you can see about this kind of stuff. But I think to kind of bring it back to the event a little bit and, and look at what we have, uh, coming up. I mean, it’s, I think you’re gonna have, we try to balance a little bit in each category. So one thing you can expect is that there’s going to be something at least two or three sessions very specific to your niche. And then we highly suggest you go to other topics that maybe you wouldn’t normally attend because you’re still gonna go to those other shows in your niche, right? This is the one chance you get to go listen to some of the speakers about some things that are very relevant to you, but maybe not something you deal in your day to day, especially at events. And then we have some fun stuff around the event as well. Um, we’re doing, like a vendor is one of our biggest partners that I, I mentioned, I’m speaking at their conference next week. Um, they’re doing a, like a whole networking thing for us on the, on the first evening we have a president’s dinner. I, it’s a invitation only event that we do. It’s, um, it’s, we don’t reveal it until we have a really cool, um, activations company that helps us put it together and we don’t reveal much about it until the time. Come to the event and find out. Um, there you go. Yeah. So there’s gonna be a lot going on. It’s, it’s really, I I think it’s, it’s big, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a small event in that intimate, like if you come there for two days, you’re gonna pretty much get to meet most of the people that are there. And not that many events I would say can say that about, about networking.
Well, that’s why I love these preview episodes because the intentionality behind these conferences. ’cause as attendees sometimes we just, you know, we show up, we see the agenda, we see all the programming and the intentionality behind your education, your programming, the activations and the hard work behind that and the, and the reason why, you know, even from the location to the time of year that you, uh, you know, you, uh, host this show. It’s so, it, it, it’s so methodical. It’s, it’s so cerebral and what you guys are doing. I’m, I’m so excited. I mean, you guys have got me pumped up and energized to go, uh, in, in December. Um, and one thing on wellness and longevity, I mean, we, we talked at the top of this episode about how, you know, luxury travel has a special connection to people, you know, through tradition, you know, and, and connection and, and that longevity, that wellness, you know, it, you can call the trend, you can, it’s, it’s here to stay. I think we’ve all identified that that’s just the natural next step with luxury because, you know, it’s obviously has a strong connection to our soul. The next part of that is your body, right? So that’s what the luxury travel is going to anticipate. Like you were saying, Barack anticipating the needs before you know it, you’re not waiting for those o other sectors, like John was saying, for the brand to mandate it. You wanna be in front of this, you wanna be the trendsetter. And that’s, that’s what luxury hospitality has always been. It’s been the trendsetter for hospitality. So as we wrap up, you know, I want to ask, it’s my first time going maybe with our audience, uh, considering, uh, attending, uh, for the first time. What would be one tip from each of you, uh, for a first time attendee of this conference? Jon, we’ll start with you.
Uh, I think it would be that that common phrase, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Uh, just, just kidding. I would say, you know, be, be confident and, and you know, everyone is very open, right? So don’t be intimidated of, oh, I’m going and I, there’s a CEO or an owner or hospitality management company. You know, walk up, be friendly, engage people, talk to people. You, I mean, you could pretty much meet almost everybody at our conference, right? I think for everyone is very open to networking and connecting, um, and learning. And so come with that open mind. Don’t, don’t worry about, oh, is this gonna be a clique-ish event? So can I just go walk up and talk to this CEO of a hotel or the CEO of a hospitality management company? I, I think that’s one of the best things about, about our event is you can meet anybody, you can talk to anybody, learn anything. Um, so, so, so come with that and come with that mindset of you’re gonna be social.
For me, um, what I would say is, and I’ll, I’ll back this up. Um, I think that this event, what surprises a lot of people, I think a lot of shows, especially expos, they have sessions. I’ve spoken at those sessions and I think that they’re, they’re not the main purpose of those events. And so when people come, they miss out maybe on a lot of expertise that’s given. I think at our event, it’s really focused around sessions. Take the time. If you get a, if you get invited or you buy a ticket or whatever, and you come to this event, take the time to go to as many sessions as you can. I’ve had some of the most experienced hoteliers in the world attend sessions at our event, come out with like notebooks full of stuff because this event was actually built for the highest level of, of decision making in the industry. So we, we really have incredible content try to go to that. Everything is recorded and it’s gonna be given away for free. But I feel like, and at, at the end of this, uh, over the year, so you’ll get access to it. But I feel like if you come in person, it’s different. And I would say bring somebody, so the people who come to me, like the ones that really wow me every year are, I get, we get like general, we’ll get like a GM or an MD of a the luxury hotel and they’ll bring like a couple of their staff members with them, their team, and the next year they bring like two more and it’s like a reward for them because they just said it’s, they learn so much at that event and it just motivates them going into the new year. So I said I would back it up. I’ve, what I am prepared to do is I, ’cause I feel it’s really important, I’ve seen it over the years. If there is any manager, general manager, hotel owner, anybody who would like to bring somebody from their team, we’ll give them a pass. So if they buy a pass, we’ll give them a pass so that they can bring one of the, because I know it’s not always, you know, it’s expensive. The good news is this year, one thing about resorts world is that they have two, we have two hotels. So we have the Conrad and we have the Hilton. So you can pretty much find anything for your budget. I think the range is pretty wide with that. But at the same time, like I said, I, I think it’s super, it’s not just for you. I think we talked about our t um, industry having, we are in the business of people, we’re a people business. And if I learned anything about being in the best hotel in the world, it’s that where most other hotels fall short on the service side is that they don’t delegate enough expertise to, or, or even bandwidth to solve guest problems to their, to their, to the people below them, their line team and stuff like that. So I think that to empower them, not just being able to take care of their guests, but also giving really big picture understanding of what’s going on in the industry is very powerful and motivating for them. So again, I I advise that anybody that’s coming here for the first time, um, bring somebody from your team and reach out to us and say, Hey, Barack said that we get free passes, he’ll match whatever we buy. So my two passes, I’ll give you two passes because the more of your team you bring, I think the more benefit you’re gonna have and it’s gonna see right? It’s gonna go right through. It’s a great way to start your new year.
Yeah, absolutely. And, and those topics and sessions that you were talking about Barack have heard, you know, are great conversation starters. They’re great icebreakers for, you know, what John, you know, advice was, uh, to to talk about, you know, how people are implementing longevity into their hotel brand or, or into their luxury property. So, you know, there’s a lot of continuity there. Uh, really excited for that. Uh, hopefully there will be a lot of sweet spot listeners and, and luxury hoteliers that we meet out in Vegas. Appreciate both of you coming on. You know, as we wrap up today, would love to hear as co-founders, you know, here we are, 16th edition of the Inspire USA event. You said third edition of the, uh, inspire Europe. You know, what’s your, what’s your vision for the future of ILHA as we move into, you know, the, the back half of the, the 2020s? Uh, Jon, we’ll start with you.
Uh, you know, I’m excited to, uh, I would say expansion in other regions of the world. You know, we’re, we’re working on stuff where there’s tremendous innovation and investment in the luxury hotel side. Um, so we’re looking at, you know, how we could, I don’t, is diversify, but, you know, have more of a global presence. Like I said, we’re Brock, she we’re doing Europe, you know, we’re doing the US and the Americas. I think there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on. I think, you know, we’ve been super successful in being basically the biggest influencer and educator from a digital standpoint is really looking at how could we take that to the next level, you know? So it just, you know, very exciting times and, and just the investment we’re seeing in luxury hotel projects or in the luxury wellness and longevity, you know, looking at, you know, how do we, how do we help take that to the next level? Um, I I, you know, we’re just very excited. I think we’re, we’re very lucky ’cause we’re in this space of innovation and invest, which isn’t always happening in other industries.
Yeah, I mean, I, and also it’s interesting. We, I think we get to see like what’s going on around the world. Very, it’s, it’s kind of fun sitting in, like John’s speaking about, like we, as we know here in the US for instance, the, the, the, the investment side is slowing down, right? So in real estate, but we know that in, like John’s very big, he’s on his way to Saudi next week. Um, he’s involved in a lot of big projects that are going on in there and in Asia, some of the projects in Asia and stuff like that. So there is stuff booming around the world, and that’s what’s good as well as is that it, you know, when one area starts to dip, the other area picks up. And so we can kind of give a perspective of that. But I’ll also say that the, the future of ILHA is really not up to us. It never has been. It’s always been organic and we’ve, you, we have, we’re it’s not John or I, you the organization is, is, is, is, is hundreds of thousands of people. And what happens is that pockets of those people start to say, Hey, we want to do something, right? We have a chapter in LA that just, you know, kind of came up over the last couple of years and they’ve been incredibly active. They just went, they had an event, uh, recently at the region for the relaunch of the region, Santa Monica. Before that, they had another one for the rebranding of w at the W Hollywood. We had another group approach us from, uh, from, from London. And so now we have a chapter, uh, they’re on their like third event already. And it’s run by like the leaders of the Four Seasons, the, um, the head of the Claridges and some of the top luxury hotels, obviously, uh, global Asset Solutions, those kind of companies. So they’re, they’re coming to us and saying, Hey, we, we were involved in your systems. We wanna do more and we wanna do some local stuff. Can we take it from there? So the future of our organization has always been by the people. Like they come to us, we don’t plan, we just go with the direction it wants to go. And we’ve been like that since the beginning. And I think that that’s, that’s what’s helped us really be strong is, is, is not trying to like, try to steer it in any one direction, but let it go where it’s naturally gonna go.
Love to hear that. And so cool to see those, those chapters and, you know, additional events popping up, but, you know, excited for the next chapter and, uh, you know, honored to be a part of it as well. You know, travel Media group, proud members, partners of the ILHA. So thank you so much, uh, John Barack, uh, for joining me here on the Sweet Spot. Uh, just really teeing off, uh, a an incredible event that I, I’m very much looking forward to. I know hoteliers are as well. Uh, and we’ll see you in Vegas in, in just a couple months now.
Yeah. And also thank big thanks to Travel and Media Group and yourself for, for your support and being innovative. You know, like podcasts are, are, are you, you’ve really been successful at getting your podcast, um, you know, to have a huge following in the hotel industry. And, and I think that we are excited to have you guys here and Travel Media Group, what you’ve done. I think there are not many, you know, as this industry constantly changes, they need, you know, the industry needs partners that are like kind of one step ahead and can guide them as I’ve taught, spoken about it. And definitely in the like hotel marketing space. You guys are sort of at the forefront of that. So we’re excited to partner with you guys as well.
Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate that, Jon, thanks for joining me, Barack. Thank you. And like I said, we’ll see you in Vegas in just a couple months.
All right. Thanks for listening to the Suite Spot. We’ll talk to you next time To join our loyalty program. Be sure to subscribe and give us a five star reading on iTunes. Suite Spot is produced by Travel Media Group. Our editor is Brandon Bell with Cover Art by Bary Gordon. I’m your host Ryan Embree, and we hope you enjoyed your stay.
